A sister's heartbreak over the unsolved murder of her twin

For almost two decades Rhoda Roberts has lived with the crippling fear that whoever murdered her twin sister killed the wrong twin, after she received a tip-off from NSW police to watch her back.

Roberts, the head of Indigenous programming at the Sydney Opera House, has lived a half-life since the bound, tortured and dismembered remains of her sister Lois was found in the Whian Whian Forest on the mid-NSW north coast in January 1999.

Her voice cracks with emotion as she recalls the time a detective from a NSW homicide squad shared with her a series of hand scrawled notes uncovered in a car in the weeks after her sister’s bones were found.

“They photocopied them and showed them to me... He had my name in it. He had a big cross, he had the dam and he had the trail of Whian Whian," Roberts told 9Stories.

"He (the detective) spent three hours with me... he wanted to show me this photograph of this car because he kept thinking the guy was going to come get me.

“The detective thought, ‘Oh, he got the wrong sister'.”

Roberts was in the middle of planning the indigenous segment of the opening ceremony for the Sydney Olympics when she received the call that her sister had been murdered.

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Lois, who was just 39 years old, had been missing for six months after disappearing from outside Nimbin Police Station in July 1998 after hitchhiking back to her home in Lismore, a NSW town just 30 minutes from the holiday haven of Byron Bay.

A shy bushwalker from the city had found Lois’ remains and her shallow grave after traipsing 30 metres away from his walking group and into the Whian Whian forest’s silent, unruly scrub to answer nature’s call.

To this day, no one has been charged with the murder of the beloved sister, daughter and mum.

The 30 minute journey from Nimbin Police Station to Lismore. (Google Maps) ()

“What people don't understand is that I'm dealing with this every day. It never leaves you,” Roberts, a 2016 Order of Australia recipient, said between tears.

“I've had arguments with family. My brothers say to me ‘we've lost a sister too’. I say you don't understand. I've lost a twin. It's like I've lost a limb.”

Cruelly, Lois' death was the second time Roberts had grieved the loss of her “feisty twin and protector”.

When they were just 20, Lois suffered a catastrophic brain injury in a car accident. She was put on a ventilator and given little hope of surviving the first 48 hours.

As her family kept vigil at her hospital bedside Roberts, a qualified nurse, pleaded with her father, Frank, a proud Bundjalung man and pastor, to switch off Lois’ ventilator.

He chose to defy her saying “where there is breath, there is life”. Instead he lay feathers across Lois’ body and climbed atop her hospital bed to sing in traditional song. As Roberts recalls, the following day Lois showed signs of brain activity.

Yet the severity of her injuries meant Lois would never return to the vibrant and spirited person she had become before the accident.

Over the years, police investigations into Lois' case, and links to a possible serial killer who preyed on female hitchhikers, have run dry.

Not even an inquest into Lois’ death in 2002 provided new clues as to those responsible, with the two-week hearing returning an open finding and an order for inquest documents to be supressed.

John Lehmann, the detective chief inspector from the NSW Police unsolved homicide team, told 9Stories Lois’ case is one of the about 600 cold cases currently on file.

He said while her case is “subject to review” a lack of new evidence had caused it to stall.

He urged anyone with information about Lois’ murder to immediately contact police, adding that more often than not people don’t come forward at the time out of “fear or intimidation”.

The Roberts' sisters as children growing up in Lismore. (Screenshot Creative Spirits/Ivan Sen) ()

Such news is little comfort for Roberts and her family. The lack of solid leads has forced them to cling to whispers and half told theories.

One of the theories is that Lois was picked up by a local man and taken to Nimbin caravan park where she was severely beaten with a slab of wood before being kept alive for the next 10 days.

“After that he said he heard a sound which sounded like a 4x4 hitting a chest.”

It is then thought that she was bound and kept as a sex slave for those 10 days before she was eventually killed.

'Lois rock': Nimbin locals have created a memorial in Nimbin Park to remember their friend, Lois Roberts. ()

Tragically, as Roberts tells it, NSW police officers filed a missing person’s report on Lois on or around day 10 after failing to believe she was missing. They thought she had just “gone walkabout”.

While there is no certainty she would have been found in those 10 days, Roberts firmly believes Lois could have been found alive.

A second theory arose after a Whian Whian forest ranger spotted a group of men in a car “loitering “near the fire trail where Lois’ remains were found. It has been suggested that a local had concealed Lois’ body in the boot of their car before driving it into the forest.

A third theory is that Lois was caught in a bungled jewellery robbery involving drug running local bikies who were overheard boasting about the crime weeks later at a Gold Coast hotel.

“I used to write it all down religiously so you can decipher whether or not they’re a bit crazy,” Roberts says of all the rumours she’s been told over the years about Lois’ death.

“It’s weird all these different people coming to me with things. I say go to the police. They never do.”